Chapter 2: Judas Caldwell

Judas awoke slowly as he let out a groan. His body ached all over and his vision was foggy at best. His surroundings were dimly lit by a blue glow from above that he couldn't make out. The rocky cavern seemed to have a pathway ahead.

“Did I get struck by lightning”, Judas thought as he began to rise to his feet. Judas was used to the occasional hangover, but this pain was different. It was as if he was ripped apart and stitched back together. Judas looked down to see a bed of flowers beneath him covered in streaks of blood. As his eyes followed the trail, he realized the blood came from an open wound on his left shoulder. Judas quickly clutched his arm to stop the bleeding

“What the hell happe-”, Judas froze as memories flooded his mind. “Shit, David and Marty fell down here too”.

“Wait, where is down he-” before Judas could finish his next thought the flowers beneath him began to spring roots from the ground that gently rose towards Judas.

Judas stepped back startled as he grabbed his banjo off the ground. He lifted it above his head as if it were a baseball bat.

“What the fuck”, Judas muttered as he observed the flowers, his vision now somewhat restored. They did not look like any normal plant Judas had seen. They glowed a pale blue and had bulbs that spiraled into different patterns as they swayed. Judas was unnerved by how otherworldly they looked.

“Lord, oh God please watch over me”, Judas said as he stepped towards the flowers. He reached out and the roots gently touched his wrist. They were coal black and had blue spirals running down them.

The roots moved to his injured arm and began wrapping around it quickly. Judas felt his arm go numb the moment they touched his wound.

“I think it’s… fixing me”, Judas mumbled as he watched the roots dance along the wound pulling and mending the flesh. Judas was awestruck that such a thing could exist. If the government knew about this, it could help thousands of people.

The roots let go of his arm and returned to the ground. His wound disappeared leaving a painless scar. Judas noticed that the flower buds had soaked up the blood that was streaked upon them, turning them a shade of red.

The pathway that laid before him had a light at the end of it. This was illuminating the cramped, rocky space along with the light of flowers.

Judas grabbed his backpack and made his way up the path. As Judas walked, he began strumming his banjo to calm his nerves. The path led to an opening in the wall of the cavern. Judas crawled through the crack into the light and froze.

Before him was a huge, cavernous space that expanded far beyond the eye could see. Miles above his head the roof of the cavern was lined with streaks of blue glowing flora stretched that gave the cavern light. It was about as bright as a cloudy day above ground.

Judas could see forests of multicolored plants decorating the cavern and rivers that flowed in odd directions, almost defying physics.

“The garden of Eden”, Judas said as a tear flowed down his cheek. The sight was beautiful and unlike anything Judas had seen before.

“I gotta find the others, maybe David and Marty fell nearby.”, Judas thought as he began to move down the rocky slopes. Between him and the nearby forest was a grassland that he would have to cross.

Judas felt a wave of nostalgia as he approached. “It reminds me of my youth, running through the wheat fields on grandpa’s farm”, Judas thought.

The grassland was made up of wheat like stalks, waist high and bright purple in color. Judas walked into the field as the stalks brushed against his hand. The plants were soft like cotton and had a vibrating hum to them.

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“This place is like a paradise. Maybe the others-”. Before Judas could finish his train of thought a loud crunch echoed beneath his foot. Judas jumped back, his heart nearly froze as he gazed upon the broken human skull on the ground.

The skull was next to what looked like a corpse. The bones were charred black as if they were burned without a scrap of flesh attached. The clothes left on the corpse were ragged despite looking high quality.

Judas reached down and ripped off a scrap of the clothing. It had words stitched into it that were barely readable.

The words read, “Markus Sparrow, Echo squad 133-7”.

“This guy was part of the Echo team”, Judas thought as dread began to creep up his spine. “What did this”.

Judas noticed something nearby that stood above the purple stalks. It had not been there before, but it moved closer towards Judas.

It was a translucent gray allowing Judas to see through the creature's skin. The body of the creature was like an amoeba or a giant slug. It had one bulbous eye that sat atop its head. It moved slowly across the ground as if it were slithering.

Judas tried to move but his body stayed still. Judas felt warmth in the back of his mind as he stared the creature in the eye. The feeling reminded him of when he had sleep paralysis as a child, watching the world unable to move.

As the creature came close enough, Judas could see its inner organs. They were like green tubes that moved substances throughout the creature's body. Judas finally mustered the strength to look down from the creature's eye only to be met with horror.

There was a person floating within the creature's chest. The man wore the same military uniform as the corpse. He kicked and flailed violently as bubbles fizzled from his body. It made Judas sick to his stomach as it reminded him of watching chicken fry.

Strips of flesh floated alongside him and parts of his bone were exposed. Whatever this thing was doing to him Judas figured it had been doing it for a long while now.

The man reached his hand towards Judas and opened his mouth wide, seemingly screaming for help. However, there was no sound, only the vibrating hum of the surrounding stalks.

Judas finally snapped out of his frozen state and began running towards the forest.

The creature opened its mouth and launched green tendril-like appendages at Judas. Judas quickly ducked as they flew over his head at blinding speed. The creature recalled its tendrils, beginning to fire again.

“Fuck you, you overgrown devil. You inhuman piece of shit”, Judas shouted as he pulled his 357-magnum revolver snub nose from his backpack.

Judas fired two shots at the creature with only one hitting. The bullet tore through the creature like butter, ripping several of the green tubes apart. However, the creature molded its body back together, reconnecting separated organs and patching its own flesh together.

Judas turned and sprinted towards the forest. “I can make it”, he thought as his breathing became harder. His legs began to grow weary as he bolted across the grassland.

As Judas ran, he noticed more charred corpses strewn across the ground. Judas did not even have time to register if they were all members of Echo team as he passed.

Before Judas could get any further a strong force blasted him from his left. It swept Judas up and threw him several feet into the air. Luckily, he was able to hold on to his gun despite the surprise attack.

Judas landed on some stalks, uprooting the few closest to him. His mind blanked as the impact shook his core. “Was that water?”, Judas thought, feeling his now damp clothes.

Above him a green mass of water flowed, as if gravity had no control over it. The mass of water was firing several smaller jets of water towards the ground surrounding it. Upon looking Judas noticed that there were several of these water masses emerging from small caves nearby.

The jets of water seemed as if they were watering the stalks of grass despite their ferocity. Judas tried to get back to his feet, but the creature’s tendril latched on to his leg.

“Oh shit”, Judas thought, panic seeping into him. The tendril began to reel him in causing him to slide across the ground. The creature’s mouth gaped open ready to devour him once he was close enough.

Judas fired his gun wildly at the creature. His fear gripped his soul as the bullets passed through the creature. One of his bullets hit the man within the creature.

The man's flailing slowed down while he looked Judas in the eye. The bullet hit him in the neck and left his head barely attached to his body by a piece of tendon. The man smiled at Judas as the light left his eyes, the skin on half his face already burned away.

Judas fired his last bullet in his last desperate attempt at survival. It burst through the creature's eye causing it to wretch away. Its tendril released him as the creature disappeared into the grassland.

Judas laid on the ground panting, trying to collect his thoughts.

He then quickly got up and looked around to make sure there were no other creatures. The grassland seemed to be calm again as the purple stalks continued to let their hum be heard.

The water masses were still firing jet streams over the grassland as they floated along. They were reminiscent of clouds releasing rain.

Judas quickly ran to the forest line where he sat on a tree stump. Or at least he thought it was a stump, everything here seemed so odd. The trees were silver with bark that was the consistency of rubber.

As Judas caught his breath he pulled his ammo bag from his pocket. There were only six bullets left which he used to load his gun.

Judas took off his backpack to check what supplies he had. His banjo had taken a beating from the fall and being thrown around, but it was still functional.

“This place is a little slice of hell isn’t it”, he said as he pulled a bottle of whisky from his backpack.

Judas stared at the bottle blankly for a moment. “Gonna run away to a bottle huh?”, Judas thought bitterly. His hand shook thinking about the man's face before he died. No matter how much he tried to escape the image, it would not leave his head.

“A quick sip will calm my nerves”, Judas said. He lifted the bottle to his lips and froze. He stared at the bible that was sticking out of his bag.

“No. No. NO”, Judas shouted. “Lord, give me strength, help me to rely on you”, Judas said triumphantly. He slowly poured the contents of the bottle on the ground before dropping it.

“I’m gonna find those two bastards and we are gonna crawl our way out of here, no matter what”, Judas said as he walked into the forest.